Preface to Murder Read online

  Preface to Murder

  An Oxford Murder Mystery

  Bridget Hart Book 6

  M S Morris

  This book is a work of fiction and, except in the case of historical fact, any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  M S Morris have asserted their right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

  msmorrisbooks.com

  Published by Landmark Media, a division of Landmark Internet Ltd.

  Copyright © 2021 Margarita Morris and Steve Morris

  Table of Contents

  Table of Contents

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  34

  35

  36

  37

  38

  Thank you for reading

  1

  The golden stonework, tall arched windows and elaborately vaulted ceiling of the Bodleian Library’s Divinity School made a lofty setting for a literary event. Bathed in the warmth of the late evening sunlight, the audience seated inside the medieval hall clapped politely as the spokesperson for the Oxford Literary Festival – a rather formidable lady in a tailored black trouser suit – concluded her health and safety briefing and welcomed the writer and interviewer to the podium.

  Michael Dearlove – greying but still rakish in appearance, and well known for his award-winning articles in The Guardian and other left-leaning publications – was arguably the more famous of the two people now ascending the platform, but it was the writer and academic, Diane Gilbert, that everyone had come to hear. Dearlove’s task this evening would be merely to pose questions and steer the conversation around her debut book. No doubt the audience was hoping for an interesting and thought-provoking discussion.

  From her vantage point standing at the back of the fifteenth-century hall – the oldest part of Oxford’s world-famous university library – Detective Inspector Bridget Hart had a good view of the academic who was now making herself comfortable in one of the two chairs placed at forty-five degrees either side of a low table on which the festival organisers had arranged two glass tumblers and bottles of mineral water.

  Diane Gilbert crossed her long legs and leaned back in her seat, surveying the audience from on high. She was one of those exceptionally tall women who made Bridget acutely conscious of her own diminutive stature. At almost six foot, surely Diane didn’t need to wear those towering heels that only served to elevate her even more above her fellow humans?

  Bridget estimated the writer to be about sixty years of age, but so well groomed that she would cast many a younger woman into the shadows. Her hair, coloured in shades of dark blonde with subtle highlights, was cut into a layered bob. Her cheekbones were sharp, her eyebrows plucked professionally to perfection, and there was no sign of that sagging jawline that betrayed the age of so many women in later-middle life. Bridget strongly suspected the work of cosmetic intervention in keeping Diane’s glowing skin so ice-rink smooth. The woman looked as if she worked out regularly too, her lithe and supple figure displayed to advantage in the understated designer dress she wore with effortless elegance.

  Another reason for Bridget to dislike her.

  The New Year was now far from new, and three months on, Bridget’s well-intentioned resolutions to eat less and exercise more had been consigned to the realm of wishful thinking. A healthy diet and regular visits to the swimming pool seemed incompatible with the job of police detective. At least that was her excuse, and she wasn’t afraid to use it.

  But it wasn’t simply Diane’s lithe figure and immaculate presentation that made Bridget feel so uncharitable towards the woman. She wasn’t so small-minded as to resent an attractive woman. Nor was it Diane’s height, since almost everyone Bridget encountered was taller than her. No, the fact was that in her brief meeting with the writer before the talk, Bridget had found her to be rather cold and supercilious, not to mention surprisingly ungrateful that two members of Thames Valley Police were giving up their evening to “watch over her” as Chief Superintendent Grayson had put it to Bridget earlier in the day.

  ‘She’s received a death threat,’ Grayson had told her that morning when he’d summoned Bridget into his office and inquired if she had any plans for the evening. As it happened, it was the school Easter holidays, and Chloe, her teenage daughter, was visiting her father – Bridget’s ex-husband, Ben – in London. Jonathan, Bridget’s boyfriend, was away in New York on business. Was “boyfriend” the right word to use when she was in her late thirties (she had turned thirty-nine the previous month, but was still in a state of denial) and Jonathan already in his forties? It was Chloe who now had a boyfriend, yet another state of affairs that Bridget was still trying to get used to. As for Jonathan, “friend” didn’t convey the true nature of his relationship to Bridget, and “partner” suggested some kind of professional acquaintance. “Romantic partner” sounded altogether too pretentious. If Bridget had been more daring, she might have referred to Jonathan as her “lover”, but that would have made her sound like a character from a cheesy romantic novel. She would just have to stick with “boyfriend” and try not to look embarrassed whenever she said it.

  ‘Plans, DI Hart? Hmm?’ pressed Grayson, and Bridget realised that her thoughts were wandering. She had fully intended to spend her evening alone catching up with a boxset on Netflix and finishing off a half-drunk bottle of Moscato and a slice of chocolate gateau from the patisserie on Banbury Road, but she didn’t think the Chief Super would regard that as a pressing engagement. ‘No sir, no plans at all.’

  ‘I’m assigning you to watch over her,’ said Grayson, and Bridget got the impression that his response would have been much the same whether she had answered yes or no. ‘The Deputy Commissioner thinks we should take this threat to her life seriously, and assign a couple of plain clothes officers to the task, at least until the literary festival is over.’

  ‘Why would someone want to kill a writer?’ Bridget asked. Diane Gilbert wasn’t exactly a household name. At least Bridget hadn’t heard of her before.

  Grayson drew his eyebrows together, nodding gently as if he had asked himself the same question. But he was clearly under pressure to carry out the wishes of his superiors. ‘Apparently her newly-published book has attracted some controversy. I suggest that you familiarise yourself with its contents before the talk begins.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  Bridget had so little time to read these days that the prospect of burying her nose in some obscure academic’s latest publication held little appeal. But attending the Oxford Literary Festival sounded like a better gig than many of the jobs she was required to do as DI. At least she would be indoors, in the gorgeous surroundings of the Divinity School, and hopefully very far from any likely criminal activity.

  She had considered going to the literary festival with Jonathan when the programme had been released earlier in the year. She’d almost booked tickets to go to the Sheldonian to see an award-winning, best-selling author of historical fiction who had just published the long-awaited final instalment of her trilogy. But she’d been too busy at work, and when she finally got ro
und to visiting the festival’s website, all the tickets for that event had sold out. Now here she was, and although she was technically working, and the event wasn’t one she would personally have chosen, the venue was very much to her taste. She would never tire of Oxford’s glorious university buildings, and the Divinity School was surely one of the jewels in its crown. Now, with the last light quickly fading outside, she allowed her gaze to roam over its incredible ceiling. Gothic in style, and five centuries old, it was a masterwork in stone – a mass of soaring arches, intricately interconnected swirls and hanging pendants. The uplighters located around the edge of the hall accentuated its curved forms with light and shadow.

  Standing at her side, Bridget’s detective sergeant, Jake Derwent, shifted his weight from one foot to another and clasped his big hands behind his back. Even Diane Gilbert with her stick insect legs and her stilettos couldn’t compete with Jake’s six-foot-five frame.

  Bridget had asked him to accompany her to the literary festival for no better reason than he was good company. Unlike her, Jake seemed genuinely to have had no plans for the evening, other than “a beer, a curry and a game of football on the telly”, and they were now positioned together at the back of the hall. Standing head and shoulders above her, and with his thick ginger beard, the young sergeant had attracted a fair amount of attention, especially from the ladies in the audience. Diane Gilbert, too, had seemed slightly less dismissive of Jake than she had of Bridget, and the tips of the young sergeant’s ears had turned a delicate shade of salmon when she referred to him sarcastically as her handsome protector.

  Nearby, a table piled high with glossy hardback editions of Diane Gilbert’s book was being staffed by a team from Blackwell’s bookshop, who were obviously hoping to sell a large number of copies to the festival-goers. Bridget wondered whether they were being over-optimistic with their teetering display of hardbacks. Bridget had picked one up and scanned the blurb on the back of the dust jacket while waiting for the talk to begin. The book was titled A Deadly Race: How Western Governments Collude in Sales of Arms to the Middle East and purported to lay bare the shameful facts of the British and American governments’ dealings with countries such as Saudi Arabia. Bridget noted that Michael Dearlove had provided a quote for the cover. ‘This book will make you rethink everything you know.’ But at nearly five-hundred pages long, Bridget wasn’t sure she had the time or the patience to reconsider anything, especially not matters of national security. It wasn’t the security of the nation that was Bridget’s responsibility, merely the safety of one person. Besides, the densely-packed words had seemed to blur as she flicked through the book’s many pages. She blinked and tried to focus on the narrow typeface, but it was no good. She wasn’t even forty – surely she didn’t need reading glasses already!

  She had returned the book to the pile, obviously disappointing the eager young man from Blackwell’s who had hoped to make a sale. But unless Diane Gilbert presented her with a signed copy as a mark of gratitude – and there seemed scant chance of that, judging by the dismissive reception the academic had given her – Bridget didn’t think she’d be adding this particular publication to the ever-increasing pile of books she intended to read, one day, when she had more time.

  Soon, she promised herself. And the exercise and the diet too.

  The applause died down and Michael Dearlove opened the proceedings by introducing his guest. Diane Gilbert was a lecturer and researcher at the Blavatnik School of Government in Oxford and although this was her first book, Dearlove seemed to think that it was of considerable importance to the public debate.

  Bridget kept one eye on the proceedings, while simultaneously checking out the room for threats. A ruthless killer at the literary festival seemed unlikely indeed, and there were no obvious candidates amongst the largely middle-aged and middle-class audience. The notion that one of the Blackwell’s staff might be a trained assassin with a concealed weapon was equally preposterous. Bridget thought regretfully of the chilled Moscato and chocolate gateau waiting for her back in her cottage in Wolvercote. Her evening in front of the TV, though not exactly life-improving, appeared to have been wasted for nothing. Jake, too, seemed distracted. He shuffled his feet and rubbed his nose – both giveaways that his mind was elsewhere. She prodded him gently to refocus his attention on the task in hand.

  On stage, Dearlove was asking Diane about the motivations behind her latest work. ‘Why did you choose to write this book, and can you tell us why you think it’s so important to tell this story right now?’

  Diane responded in cool, measured tones, although her views were certainly controversial. In her opinion, the current conflicts in the Middle East were due largely to the failure of western governments to show respect for Arabic culture, and of the greed of those same western nations in enriching themselves through the sales of arms. Continued instability in the region was in the interests of the British and the Americans because it kept the arms trade alive.

  Bridget began to wonder who might have sent the death threat. But the details of the talk didn’t engage her attention for long. Instead she found herself thinking of Chloe and what she was doing right now. She’d gone to London to spend a couple of days with Ben, and – this news had rocked Bridget’s boat and left her feeling out of sorts for quite a while – his fiancée.

  Bridget still couldn’t quite believe it. Ben and his girlfriend, Tamsin, had swanned off to the Maldives for Christmas and had returned in January to announce their engagement and their plans to marry in the summer. That was certainly one way of solving the problem of what to call your significant other half. Fiancée! Bridget was putting a brave face on it, but the news had left her reeling. It wasn’t that she wanted Ben back, far from it. Her marriage to him had been a disaster, the only good thing to come out of it being Chloe. And besides, she loved Jonathan dearly. But the idea of Ben marrying Tamsin – who Bridget still hadn’t met but imagined to be more glamorous and attractive than her, and certainly younger and slimmer, not to mention taller – left her feeling bruised.

  The fact that Tamsin had asked Chloe to be her chief bridesmaid, and that Chloe had accepted with eager enthusiasm, hadn’t softened the blow. The main purpose of Chloe’s current visit to London was to attend a fitting for her dress. This, together with the bridal gown, was being designed by a dressmaker who, according to Chloe, made outfits “for celebs”. Bridget worried that under Tamsin’s influence her daughter was becoming too fixated with celebrity culture and her appearance. The almost certainly svelte Tamsin couldn’t possibly be a healthy role model for an impressionable teenager. Whilst Bridget would gladly have shed a few pounds herself, she didn’t want Chloe becoming anorexic. The pressure to look good for a wedding, and to fit into a tight dress could be immense, especially for a growing girl. Jonathan had reassured her that Chloe was absolutely fine and showed no signs of developing an eating disorder. But it didn’t stop Bridget from worrying.

  Forty minutes or so after it had begun, the main part of the interview drew to a close and Dearlove invited the audience to ask questions. At first no one put their hand up, perhaps too intimidated by the writer’s haughty demeanour to venture an opinion of their own or risk displaying their ignorance. Then a man on the front row raised his hand and Dearlove, with an obvious look of relief, invited him to speak. A young woman with a microphone rushed over to him.

  The questioner was middle-aged and somewhat portly, dressed in a tweed jacket. Bridget couldn’t see his face, but the man’s hair was silver. ‘Ms Gilbert, you have written a very interesting book,’ he began. Diane accepted the compliment with a smile and the faintest inclination of her head, but Bridget sensed a “but” coming. The man continued, his voice growing in confidence as he framed his question. ‘But don’t you think that what you’ve revealed may be harmful to the security of the United Kingdom?’

  A frisson of excitement ran through the audience. People had paid good money to come and listen to a controversial writer and now it seeme
d they were going to get their money’s worth.

  Bridget swept her gaze across the crowd, immediately on heightened alert. Next to her, Jake shifted his position as if he too sensed possible danger. Diane Gilbert had received a death threat after all. When the questioner’s hand strayed to his jacket pocket, Bridget felt herself tensing. He pulled out a handkerchief, and she exhaled with relief. The man dabbed his forehead as if being the centre of attention was proving to be rather stressful.

  Bridget gathered from Diane’s somewhat dismissive response that she had little sympathy with the man’s concerns. But the first questioner had evidently lent courage to the others, and more hands now went up. Michael Dearlove deftly gave as many as possible a chance to ask their questions, each of which Diane Gilbert answered in her rather brusque fashion.

  Finally, and much to Bridget’s relief, Dearlove announced that there was only time for one more question. A woman attempted to lighten the mood by asking Diane if she was planning to attend any events at the literary festival herself and, if so, which ones. Diane smiled – rather condescendingly, Bridget thought – and replied that she would have liked to attend the talk by a bestselling novelist but his event had sold out as soon as tickets went on sale. Fiction, she declared, was far more popular than serious books like hers would ever be. Few members of the public had the intellectual capacity or curiosity to read in order to improve themselves. A nervous titter went around the room, but on balance the audience seemed pleased with her performance and gave Diane a more enthusiastic round of applause than she and Dearlove had received at the start of the evening.

  This time, Bridget and Jake joined in, relieved that the event had come to an end without incident.

  The formidable lady in the black trouser suit took to the stage once again, thanking the two speakers for a “simply fascinating” evening, and informing everyone that Diane would be signing copies of her book at the table set up for the purpose at the side of the podium. At least half the audience then reached into their bags and produced copies of the book which they must have purchased earlier, possibly from the Blackwell’s stand at the back of the hall. Maybe a few of them had even managed to wade through its five-hundred-odd pages. They started to form an orderly queue at the table and Bridget realised that the danger was by no means over. None of those bags had been security-checked before their owners had taken their seats. Death threat or not, the Oxford Literary Festival simply wasn’t that sort of event. To Bridget’s knowledge, no writer had ever been attacked while appearing at the festival and she was determined to keep it that way.